Public interest requires that the party’s leadership must be be credible

His premise is:

For a democracy to function there have to be at least two competing political organisations each of which can credibly participate in government. In consequence, the Conservative and Labour parties have acquired a dual role. While like lesser parties they are forums for their members, each has become a vital public good for the nation. As such they are analogous to those banks that have become “too big to fail” and so are systemically important. As with banks, the price of success is regulation.

From which point he argues:

With the increasingly likely election as Labour leader next month of Jeremy Corbyn, the hard-left MP, the 99 per cent of the electorate with no say in the contest now have no credible alternative government. The public interest requires that the leadership of those parties that are systemically important should be selected by a process which ensures that they remain credible vehicles for government and so it cannot be entrusted to their memberships.

Before concluding:

The only realistic option is for the selection of the leaders of systemically important parties to be opened to the entire electorate. That would be both more democratic and better for the country than a once-great party’s headlong rush towards oblivion.

This is interesting for a number of reasons.

First, I very firmly believe in democracy. It is what gives tax credibility in my view. But as far as I can see democracy does not require a two party state. In most of the world it does not. Paul also seems not to have noticed that we just had five years of coalition government in the UK. The premise for Paul's argument is wrong.

Second, Paul seems not to have noticed that for all practical purposes one major part of the UK did in May 2015 reject both of the largest parties. This is an option that, it seems, he would not permit. Democracy is, apparently, an option of either / or but not of a real alternative. It's hard to see how that is democracy at all.

Third, Paul thinks politics is dependent upon the existence of two political parties, and yet says we cannot trust those parties, and most especially their members, with the democratic process. His alternative appears to be state regulated parties. That sounds suspiciously like the veneer of democracy that totalitarian regimes like to present to me.

Fourth, the idea that 99% of the electorate would be left without choice if Jeremy Corbyn is elected as leader of the Labour Party seems quite bizarre to me: I had choices apart from Labour and the Conservatives at the last election.

Fifth is the fact that this idea has only got currency because of one candidate. Extrapolation from the specific to the general is almost always a bad basis for decision making.

But perhaps most tellingly of all, the poverty of Paul's logic is displayed in his refusal to pursue it to its obvious conclusions. These might include, for example, having elections to the boards of all banks opened to the whole electorate, and having their ownership made universal. He has, after all, drawn direct comparison between banks and political parties. But this is not, apparently, on offer: all that is presented is an idea that is clearly intended to encourage the status quo, convergence on the mean, the elimination of choice and the suppression of any chance of development at all in an environment that would be the antithesis of democracy itself.

18 Responses

Instead of the electorate voting for leaders of political parties why not have them decide the policies (electronic voting booths perhaps) and then elect politicians to implement them. Not my idea but that of JJ Rousseau.

Well said Richard, a worthy response to an unworthy and defenceless argument. When I read the presentation I couldn’t believe the contradictions elevated to the level of supposed reasoned argument. Many thanks for answering so eloquently and cognitively.

It always amuses me that progressive talk about PR and multiple parties. All that means is that you vote on a set of policies, but the decisions about which of those policies gets put forward is decided by the politicians *after* the election.

Which is why we ended up with a largely pointless referendum on AV rather than a lock down on student tuition fees. The former was the hobby horse of the LidDem politicians hidden in a set of policies, whereas the latter is the policy the electorate clearly wanted.

The beauty of our constitution is that the politicians have to do their coalition forming *before* the election and, ideally, come up with a grand coalition lining up behind a common standard. You end up with two of them and the electorate then picks the best set which gets implemented in full.

Those politicians that refuse to form coalitions ahead of the election are then effectively ignored by the election system. And rightly so. They refused to do politics. They then spend all their time moaning about how FPTP is ‘unfair’. It isn’t. It’s perfectly sensible when you understand what is required.

What is unfair is expecting people to vote on a list of policies that will not be implemented, and where the electorate actually have no idea what they are going to end up with.

PR is a failure because the voting is between sets of policies, but the final list of policies is decided by the elected illuminati.

What we need is to select either/or in every policy area and get the illuminati out of the decision loop.

FPTP is completely unfair because (for example) UKIP got 13% of the vote but one MP in the House of Commons, whereas the SNP got 5% of the vote but 56 MPs. Now I hate UKIP and am relatively well-disposed towards the SNP but this is an insane system. Sometimes it even results in the party with *fewer votes* getting more MPs and forming a govt! (e.g. 1951, Feb 1974). A totally ridiculous system. Most sane people I know on the left support some form of PR.

In other words Mr Collier’s definition of the concept of choice is that you can have Coca Cola in the blue bottle or Pepsi Cola in the red bottle (the Yellow and Purple bottled Virgin and Generic Cola’s no longer featuring in this model). Those who are crying out for water are no longer considered as proper citizens and members of the public and should be shoved into a corner to die of thirst.

I don’t know about Alice in Wonderland. This seems more like a case of Malice in Blunderland. Perhaps if JC does not win the leadership of the Labour Party this proposed model could be adopted to try and get him elected as leader of the Conservative Party. That would be a contest worth infiltrating.

There is a credible argument that we currently have two parties but no choice. There is precious little difference between the two parties in terms of style, personality and the fact that they have both adopted the increasingly criticised policy of ‘austerity’. The fiasco over the Welfare Bill makes for a bitter example.

The election of Corbyn as leader would at least provide a more substantial voice of opposition to the current Government and will – I hope – stimulate the kind of economic debate that has been absent for a decade or more.

Oh dear. This is very like Thatcher’s view of democracy – a “two-Party” system of near identical Parties, with no real scope for profound questioning of given “givens”, handed down from on high.

And she nearly got her wish with Blairite “New Labour”, which was closer to “Few Labour”, since so much real Labour thinking and so many real Labour members were driven from the Party. (I always jokingly suggested that Thatcher DID want two Parties, but wanted to lead BOTH of them, so as to be permanently in power!Am not do sure it was a joke, seeing the success of the Blairite takeover).

Paul Collier need only look across the pond to the USA to see the same phenomenon on an infinitely worse scale, of two Parties corporately captured, such that neither can any longer be recognised as the home of the two, great, Roosevelts, Teddy for the Republicans, and FDR for the Democrats – both of whom would probably be barred from their respective Parties today.

The poverty of Collier’s thinking is stunning, clearly conforming to Chomsky’s warning that the oligarchy will permit ever more passionate debate, but only on a VERY narrow range of issues, outside of which debate is not permissible – a pre-1984 situation, in other words.

Corbyn’s ” sin” is to have stood outside that narrow spectrum of debate, for which his is -laughably – accused of being “Hard Left”, when his ideas would have been centre ground right up to 1979.

Thatcher then decisively shifted the permitted spectrum of debate to the Right, from where Cameron had moved it again to the “hard Right” – can one imagine a One Nation Conservative administration presiding over a system in which over 4,000 people died shortly after being declared “fit to work”, using a clearly flawed and inhuman “selection” process? We have been gulled by the mind manipulation techniques of the present Government into accepting the unacceptable. Shame on us, and shame on them.

I find it rather alarming that someone with such arrogant contempt for democracy holds a teaching position in one of our universities. His view, in common with established neoliberalism is ” the little people cannot be trusted with democracy”.
Whether or not Corbyn becomes leader, he (and you, Richard) has already done this country a great service by opening up the debate and helping more people see there IS an alternative: in the narrative as well as the economics. The genie is at least out of the bottle.
I hope he becomes leader (though will fear for his sanity in that event!). PMQs I hope would be transformed with the bullying, sneering, lies & contempt for democracy on display for most of the last 5 years exposed more forcefully by JC not engaging in tit for tat playground insults, but calmly & doggedly asking hard factual questions.
Its about time the PLP grew up. Corbyn doesn’t need to become PM. I see his role as change agent whose tenure will help bring about a change in mindset and a demand for the re-establishment of democracy for the people, not the vested interests. He has the potential to energise & engage those who may have leadership qualities but have not been interested in politics as it has become. My sense is that in 2 to 3 years, a potential labour PM will emerge just as osbornomics completely unravels. Corbyn has a hell of a job to do to turn this tanker around in such a short time. For democracy sake, we have to hope he gets the support he needs to succeed.

This whole article is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. We only end up with these large parties (effectively coalitions themselves) because the first past the post system makes it all but inevitable. Sort out the voting system and too big to fail disappears!

“Democracy is, apparently, an option of either / or but not of a real alternative. It’s hard to see how that is democracy at all”

There is another flaw, an unstated assumption that it isn’t democratic or respectable to gain the mass engagement and activism of a Corbyn or an SNP campaign.

Paul lives in the politics of billionaire donations and media ‘spend’ and all else illegitimate and mere populism: so, too, do Corbyn’s rivals for the leadership.

I say ‘misconception’: Paul’s perfect Parliament is misbegotten, the product of money and miscegenation between bankers and media barons, with elected politicians merely spokesmen for their betters; and the voters mere spectators, to be herded through the turnstiles twice a decade.

“Long-term, so long as Labour and the Conservatives remain the two major parties in the UK, the only way to make progress is to persuade Labour to accept our position. Our ideas don’t win just when our party does, but when the other party advocates our ideas, too.”

I see Jeremy Corbyn as more likely to win a general election for the Labour party than any of the other candidates for the Labour leadership. Which isn’t to say he’s a shoo-in – he isn’t – but Paul Collier is wrong to say he’s unelectable. Furthermore, Collier is trying to destroy any choice in our democracy by ensuring that all the parties say pretty much the same thing. Is he affiliated with the IEA or other far-right think-tanks by any chance?

The current Labour party is a ‘covert coalition’ of an Old Labour party (which should be now choosing between Jeremy Corbyn and e.g. Ken Livingstone for leader) and a New Labour party (which should be now choosing between the other three candidates). The current Conservative party is a ‘covert coalition’ of a Europhobe Conservative party and a Europhile Conservative party. This is not democracy! 10 million voters voted ‘Labour’ in May 2015, and the current Labour Leader election is going to ‘enclose’ their support into one of two radically-opposed visions by less than 1 million activists of unknown and unchecked provenance. For which vision did the electorate vote? Some are bound to be disappointed (to put it mildly). Who cares? Anyone who did care would argue that the current Labour party and the current Conservative party should split to give the electorate real choice. That would be real democracy.

However (1), with the current disproportional representation system (FPTP), such ‘minor’ parties would be wipped out. The answer is proportional representation.

However (2), ‘honourable’ opponents of proportional representation would argue that the effectiveness of the Political Executive is more important than the last ounce of proportional democracy in the associated Representative Assembly, and they have concerns about the presumed weakness of the ‘coalition chaos’ Political Executive which they presume would have to ‘emerge’ from a Representative Assembly without a dominant Party.

However (3), if the Political Chief Executive (i.e. the UK Prime Minister in the UK) was independently-elected (i.e. as for the US President, the UK London Mayor, and the UK Bristol Mayor), that Political Chief Executive would have an independent and decisive democratic mandate to lead. An independently-elected Political Chief Executive could and should be free to appoint and manage the Political Executive on the basis of ‘best person for the job’ (rather than being pressured to find executive jobs for the ‘big beasts’ of dominant Parties in the associated Representative Assembly). This is similar to the process by which Barack Obama had to resign as Senator for Illinois when he was inaugurated as President (i.e. Political Chief Executive) of the US in 2009, and by which Hilary Clinton had to resign as Senator for New York when she took up the position of Secretary of State in the Executive of the US government in 2009.

In such a context, the debate about the future of the UK Lords can be seen to be irrelevant! The UK needs the UK Lords at the moment simply because the current (non-proportional, large-Party-biased) UK Commons is unable to moderate the UK Political Executive, and the UK Lords serves as the only (relatively-)independent moderator of the powers of the UK Political Executive. Fully-proportional representation in the UK Commons would resolve that problem ‘at source’, and we would not then need the UK Lords at all.

Whoever wins the leadership of the labour party, that new leader would be well advised to lead a campaign in the current UK Commons and Lords to promote a ‘proof of concept’ for the above ‘democratic architecture’ for London and Bristol in 2016 (Mayor and Council), followed by the Manchester City Region in 2017, and the UK Commons in 2020.